Elon Guts Twitter, Google Shutters Hangouts, And The Tech Layoffs Continue

Greetings. Welcome to Week in Review, a newsletter that brings together TechCrunch's most read stories from the past week. And what a week it was.

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Twitter mass vacation . It was Elon's first full week at the helm of Twitter since the $44 billion acquisition. It was rumored that there would be mass layoffs, and well, they had just begun. After sending an extremely impersonal Thursday night email, entire teams wake up to find their access has been suddenly revoked. With reports that the layoffs could affect half the company, Twitter officials reportedly called it an "accident" (Thanos-esque). A class action lawsuit has already been filed alleging that Twitter is not following due process here.

Discounts everywhere . Meanwhile, rumors of layoffs continue to circulate in the tech industry. Lyft cut workforce by 13%, Stripe by 14%, Opendoor by 18%, Chime by 12% and more. Meanwhile, Apple and Amazon are said to have begun hiring freezes.

Google kills Hangouts . We knew it was coming, but this week Google put the final nail in Hangouts' coffin, ditching the chat-centric web app (the Hangouts Android/iOS apps were retired last year) in favor of shutting down Google Chat. Of course, given the history of Google's chat apps, I expect to see two more launched and/or shut down by the end of this newsletter.

Falcon Heavy returns to space . This week, SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time since 2019, finally continuing a mission that had been delayed since late 2020 ("due to launch readiness issues").

Amazon is expanding its music service . "The company said it will now offer Prime subscribers a full music catalog of 100 million songs, rather than the previous more limited selection of just 2 million songs," Sarah writes, "and will make the most of the best podcasts from your service. . . -free." available."

audio summary

What's happening on the TC Podcast this week? Here are some highlights.

• Equity contributors talked about the ever-changing role of the venture capitalist, and Business Insider friend Melia Russell stopped by to tell us her latest story about how "investors are rewriting the playbooks on their maternity leave policies. " . : companies".
• Amanda joined Darrell on the TC podcast to discuss Elon's "controversial plans" to change Twitter ID verification.
• The Chain Reaction team investigates the growing list of problems Bitcoin miners have faced in recent months.

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Not a part of TechCrunch+ yet? Here's what TC+ members read most behind the paywall:

Pilot's CEO broke ground on his $60 million Series C deal, which was launched in early 2021 and blew up this week for some reason. Just weeks after raising a massive Series C, Pilot CEO Waseem Folge sat down with Lucas Matney to find out what was working in his field.

The Most Common Mistakes in Playground Decks Speaking of launch decks, TC expert Haje Jan Kamps has a list of mistakes you'll never see again in decks after going through thousands of them.

Different interview styles